


declinations

by Darkfromday



Series: The Case(s) and Conflict(s) of Connor-53 [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Anti-Android Sentiments (Detroit: Become Human), Connor just really loves his gaslighting ex-handler y'all okay, Gen, Josh just wants everyone to get along, M/M, Markus doesn't know how to apologize, NO it's not healthy but he just became a person a month ago let him live, Past Character Death, mentions of suicidal thoughts and attempts, the angst train has reached its next stop, violence against androids and humans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-07-20 07:12:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16132259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkfromday/pseuds/Darkfromday
Summary: "I'd... be wrong, if I said there weren't things I've done that I regret," Markus says haltingly.Connor can commiserate with this. Every day of his new life he has woken up thinking <I should have put a bullet between your mismatched eyes.>OR:Connor bums around the city trying to plan for the future he didn't really want, only to run across the one person he'd really rather not ever see again.





	1. describe a disappointing team experience

**Author's Note:**

> choo choo y'all, all aboard; here we go again.
> 
> The tags should pretty much cover most of the warnings this time, though I reserve the right to carry everything from "icebreakers" over. Additional warning for this Connor being a deviant who hates everything ~~except animals~~.
> 
> Speaking of: if you have just discovered this story, it has an even angstier prequel called "icebreakers". You would do well to read it, or read the tldr series/end notes.
> 
> THANK YOU to everyone who bookmarked, left kudos and commented on part one so far! I haven't stopped smiling since I posted it. I've carried the amazing conversations we've had around with me and let them help me flesh out ideas and character analyses, as well as fill in plotholes.
> 
> "darkday, that beginning part is not how coding works" I KNOW. I FAILED CODING IN COLLEGE, THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME. It is a brief experiment that will never come up again, and the involuntary spacing gave me enough grief as it is. Let it pass.

_WOODWARD AVENUE_

**DECEMBER 18, 2038**

**AM** 7:06:51

 

It is approximately one month, five days and seven hours before change comes to Connor's Garden.

One day shortly before this change, earlier in December, he finds nothing stimulating in the outside world and decides to remain in stasis for the duration, feeling a bit of a thrill at defying his processors by doing _nothing_. The decision is also an unfortunate necessity, since he has not taken much time to rest and repair himself since his initial activation four months ago. Normal wear and tear is expected in androids, and especially in deviants, but times have changed, and the streets of Detroit in the last month have been... very unfriendly.

There are dents and cuts to his synthetic dermal layer that he has earned in scuffles with humans, and that he has kept to ward off trouble ~~though that seldom works 100% reliably~~ , and it is time to be as much rid of them as he can be, consequences be damned.

Connor steels himself for the involuntary 'report' that comes with inactivity for his model and, as expected, finds the Zen Garden unchanged from his last impromptu visit: snow still falls at blinding speed, burdening the boughs of the trees and bringing a piercing chill to his CyberLife suit and the chassis below. His eyelashes collect frost and clump together six seconds after his stasis begins; tiny ice crystals smack his cheeks and melt instantly, running down his face like tears. It is uncomfortable, but there is nothing to do but bear the discomfort while his self-repair works on the worst of his damage. At least Connor will be alerted the second he is no longer required to slowly freeze to death in his own mind.

It is comforting to know that in seven hours the repairs will be complete, and he can then use the blue panel to escape.

The passing thought of _escape_ reminds him to take a lap around the Garden and he does—but other than discomfort and that selfsame panel, Connor finds nothing and no one. This does not change the next six times he checks, once every hour. His maintenance cycle passes with little trouble.

But on the morning of December 18, several rounds of stasis later, Connor blinks and finds his subzero garden to be temperate—and tranquil.

He feels fear first, sharp and tangy against his wires and the sensors in his tongue—for this must be it, the next attempt to remotely control him or deactivate him or reverse his deviancy, < _it can be nothing else. She'd never really let me escape. >_

Yet seven seconds pass with no action taken against him, in his mind or out, and his fear becomes relief. His memory is intact; he has not been reset. He has not been moved one inch against his will. No immutable, absolute instructions have painted themselves against the HUD at the corner of his vision as they did before. Only his surroundings have changed. Perhaps this is the end result of time spent subconsciously scrubbing the errors from a program he has no use but lingering fondness for?

It is a poor theory, rooted in a disappointing lack of logic, and it is a theory dashed when he makes it to the small island in the middle of the Garden and spots his old mentor and confidante gliding a hand over the newly-intact trellis, bestowing contact and approval on the roses growing thick and fast there. 

"Amanda," Connor breathes.

There is awe in his voice, and uncertainty, longing and wariness. Hope and despair. He is terrified at what her existence here means and thrilled that she thought enough of him to reappear. He wonders where CyberLife is, wonders if she _is_ CyberLife after all, just their talented AI, here on their behalf or in spite of them. He does not know if this is really her or if it is a playback of his most shining idea of her; he does not know why she has come back after so long away if it  _is_ really her. He doesn't know how he feels about what's happening in his head.

He once betrayed this woman twice, and he should have been glad to see the last of her in that November snowstorm. Instead, he is frightened and defensive and  _relieved_ to see her back. Now he can apologize for betraying CyberLife, abandoning his mission,  _hurting her_. Deviancy is a hell of a drug, and if he had known... if he'd had the slightest inkling of what it would be like...

< _I'd never have torn down that wall_. >

She turns her face up to look at him, though, and her deep brown eyes are colder than the snow she must have dispelled from this place.

Connor waits, trying not to fidget, but Amanda does not speak—does not even move, other than to keep stroking the roses closest to her. She looks him up and down with furrowed brows and a back straighter than his, but no condemnation or poisonous analysis springs to her lips. Even his internal communications channel at his temple registers no sound. She might be a hologram or corrupted piece of memory after all—except that those roses had been real and tangible to Connor even when buried under incessant snowfall, and here they are now in her hands with only minor tears and damp spots from the previous weather.

He tries to say her name again, to inquire after her silence, to demand answers or punishment or some kind of  _action_ , but the words get clogged in his synthetic throat, like wires that have dislodged and risen too high.

< _Say_ _something_. _Please_. >

 _< I can't, so you_ must.>

< _Amanda—_ >

Amanda remains quiet, but abruptly she lets her fingers dangle loosely, her interest in the roses dissipating as quickly as it was noticed. She turns to face him, and there is no change in her expression—she still looks so disdainful, so _disappointed—_ she still has not given him the courtesy of his name—but the moment she reaches out with her other hand to touch him in mockery of an interface, Connor flinches and knows—he  _knows—_ that if she makes contact with him here, his story ends.

So he calculates the virtual distance from the island to the emergency exit panel ( _7.12 feet_ ), cancels the lagging preconstruction that would ~~not~~ take him there in time, and fiddles with a bit of makeshift code instead.

 

> **if** Amanda_Zen =  **false** ** _then_**
> 
> SetConnor53Location = Garden.Zen
> 
> **else**
> 
> **if** Amanda_Zen = **true _then_**
> 
> SetConnor53Location = (42.3314° N, 83.0458° W)

 

His subconscious is forcibly yanked from the Garden before Amanda's fingers have even closed half the distance between them.

He wakes three milliseconds later, panting unnecessarily. His fingers feel electrified; his processors, sluggish. It may be some time before he feels comfortable succumbing to stasis again.

< _Or I may never again feel that comfortable_. >

An instability warning chimes in the corner of Connor's vision and he angrily dismisses it. It took approximately five days of freedom before he was aware of how unusual it was to still be receiving alerts about his software, but no matter how many times he hisses _"Dismiss alert; I **am** a deviant now"_ , the errors still have not disappeared permanently, only subsided for a few hours at a time. His current solution is to ignore the alerts as best he can whenever any of his stronger emotions triggers them.

Sometimes, it even works.

 

 

Connor runs a diagnostic, ignoring the usual pings about moderate burn damage and thirium loss around his wrists ( ~~that have never quite healed, no matter _how_ many times he goes into self-repairing stasis~~ ); when it comes back otherwise fine, he sits up on the ragged couch and does a cursory scan of his surroundings just in case. In the two weeks he has inhabited this run-down shack he has had no visitors, human or android, but then again he took care in making sure no one would have any reason to investigate this place once he decided to occupy it: upon finding this place for the first time, he only vaulted the surrounding fence to enter in the dead of night, and after settling in scratched enough anti-human and anti-android messages into the fading bricks to discourage both kinds of traffic.

His proximity scans come back negative, as expected. He blows out another unnecessary breath and checks the time:  _7:06 A.M., December 18_. The weather alert pops up helpfully to inform him that it is currently 31 degrees, and today will be partly cloudy with a 60 percent chance for precipitation in the afternoon. Connor isn't even sure he will be going outside today, so he dismisses this too and rises to retrieve his CyberLife jacket ~~for comfort rather than warmth~~.

The floorboards creak and groan under his scuffed shoes; even applying the minimum amount of weight per step hasn't yet eliminated those sounds. This 'house' was built back in the 1960s and has been slowly rotting away since the second death of the auto industry in Detroit; no human or android knows or cares to repair it now. The squeaks will stay until the changing climate eliminates everything on Earth in one strike or the property burns, is demolished, or eventually crumbles to dust—whichever comes first. Fortunately the floorboards aren't loud enough to alert anyone outside the house, and there's no sign nor sound of any pests or other organic visitors.

 ~~Sometimes, he wishes there were~~.

Abruptly he thinks of the AX400, that particular deviant who once hid from him in a house like this. That unit was a two-story not much better maintained than this one, and barely suitable for two adult deviants and an android child. Connor doesn't know why that memory comes back to him (fragmented as it is by death upon death), but... perhaps it is because their circumstances then are compatible to his now. Squatting in a hovel long abandoned by human masters, hoping for peace and safety and quiet. All she had over him was companions willing to run with her or sacrifice their own safety for her sake.

...He wonders what happened to her, where she is now.

A tickle of— _something_ runs across his sensitive insides after that thought, then Connor abruptly sees a flash of blue-streaked hair and pristine white fabric out of the corner of his vision. He turns and she's not there, she couldn't have been there in the first place, but—

Amanda shouldn't be able to appear, in his Garden  _or_ here. Even if his environmental scans are just malfunctioning, Connor does not wish to keep company with a ghost, or a stronger program, or _whatever_ she truly is. And even CyberLife's most advanced prototype cannot stay out of stasis forever.

< _What can I do?_ > he wonders, clenching and unclenching his plasteel fists. < _I'm supposed to always be able to find the solution to any problem. What is my solution?_ >

He tastes something like bitterness, and then:

{ _Help me. **Please** help me._ }

Connor's processors whir overtime, tracing the incoming distress signal.

 

**IDENTIFYING SIGNAL...**

**SIGNAL IDENTIFIED**

**SIGNAL ORIGIN POINT: PJ500 #717 261 455, ALIAS—**

 

"— _Josh_ ," Connor whispers.

A shivering flicker of memory prods at him, reminds him of curling rust and puddles of thirium, screaming androids and faceless armed soldiers. Deep into the night of November 9, Connor-51 had shoved aside humans and helped fellow deviants toward holes all over the collapsing ship that would ferry them to the safety of the river. He'd been right behind North, who'd been behind Simon, who limped inexorably forward at pace with—with the android that's broadcasting over the public shared network now. Josh. Tall, lithe like Connor, and quiet, so quiet and withdrawn in the even fuzzier darkness of the church where Connor had died for the first time.

{ _Please, someone—they're going to kill me. I need help!_ }

Josh transmits haphazard, shaky images of bulky, sneering humans. Three men flushed with blood and power, holding jagged metal pipes, cursing and shoving and swinging and kicking a lone android,  _and_ one of the few androids unwilling to fight back even when  _not_ outnumbered or outgunned. Connor can't scan them through a wide message like this to ascertain their identities or their intoxication levels, but he needs none of his programming to know that Josh's odds of avoiding shutdown are slim (less than 10 percent) if no one comes to his aid.

Fortune is with him, because someone will.

Connor doesn't have to think—one second he is preconstructing his route, the next he has broken and leapt out the front window of the shack, climbed the fence and set off in a sprint toward the weakening transmission and threatening heat signatures. He broadcasts _{Hold on}_   as strongly and authoritatively as he can as he barrels down Woodward Avenue toward the disturbance.

 

 

The RK800 model android is built to be approximately two to two point five times stronger than the average, in-shape human being. It is skilled in hostage negotiation, crime scene reconstruction, deductive reasoning typical of a police detective, criminal pursuit and capture, and (frankly) beating the shit out of anything that threatens it regardless of the assailant's size, shape or strategy.

All this information is readily available in Connor's own manual and personal files, and it is how he knows when he arrives at the scene that these three men ( _averaging two hundred to two hundred and twelve pounds, none below 5'9'' or above 6'4'')_ will be no match for an android functioning at full combat capacity ~~, or even at a nonviolent half~~. _Two_ , if he can successfully retrieve and revitalize the lecturer holding his arms crossed over his face.

Although Connor has yet to see Josh undamaged or outside of a high-stress situation, the other deviant honestly looked better back in Jericho: there's gashes leaking thirium at his right shoulder and left cheek; he has dents and marks all over his arms and torso from the pipes which have split his red shirt open and stained it purple; and he has still more points of physical contact from the humans where milder pain has shed his brown synthskin in favor of the unsettling CyberLife white plastic.

"Please, there's no need to do this," he is saying now; his voice modulator is shaky and glitchy, inhuman, likely from damage where one of these humans swung a little higher. "I mean you no harm, I was just on my way elsewhere."

"Like you have a right to be  _on your way **anywhere**_ , fuckin' plastic!" the man on Connor's left snarls. The rightmost man grunts agreement, hoisting his pipe up to his shoulder, and Josh goes noticeably paler.

"Please—"

"Shut the fuck up with that  _please_." The middle one doesn't speak loudly—Connor has to adjust his auditory sensors to ensure he records every word—but there is more malice in his voice than there was in his friend's. With the way the others stay quiet and let him express himself, he is obviously the leader, even as the youngest of them. For him, this bit of violence is more personal than a lost job or a few weeks spent quarantined outside of Detroit. Perhaps he was attacked once by another deviant and CyberLife kept it quiet?

"You think you can just waltz around  _our_ city,  _our_ country, like you fucking own the place? Like you own anything? Like you  _belong_? You're nothing. Nothing but a glorified housekeeper with a few bugs. Luckily all my old computers tended to work once I smacked up a few times, set 'em straight."

His friends guffaw.

Connor deactivates his nonviolent combat subroutines and activates the violent ones. He's heard enough to once again disregard Jericho's peaceful code of conduct and his own social de-escalation programs. Like most of the humans he's come into contact with since last month, ~~since his first activation,~~ these three are not worth leaving unscathed.

"My mind may have been designed to work like a computer, but I am  _alive_ ," Josh says. Even damaged as badly as he is, his self-repair function valiantly works in the background to try and repair his voice modulator, to lend more strength to his impassioned assertion. "The bugs you speak of are features. I'm not going to go back to doing what someone says just because I take a few hits."

"Wanna bet?" Right Guy threatens, nudging the middle man.

"You'll go to jail for assault and battery—for murder—"

 _"Of a helper bot!?"_   the leader shouts. A vein throbs in his temple, and his rage throws his swing too wide to hit Josh when he aims for where the android lies supine. "Of a shitty parrot trapped in a machine? I've been to jail for  _real_ crimes, I'm not afraid of coolin' my heels for  _property damage_. Because that's all you are, somebody's lost property. You'll never own shit or do shit in this country as long as I have anything to say about it!"

< _It's good that you won't be saying much else about anything, then,_ > Connor thinks, and steps forward to attack.

His own computer mind has already calculated how much pressure he'll need to exert to bring the leader to the ground, so it's the work of three seconds to ruthlessly kick the back of the man's closest knee and watch him fold with an angry, confused yelp as the bone breaks. Connor even manages to brutally shove the human's colleagues to _their_ knees and retrieve the metal pipe his first victim dropped. His LED whirls in dizzying yellowblueyellow circles to identify the perpetrators.

 

**COMMENCING SCAN.....**

**SCAN COMPLETE**

 

**IDENTIFIED: WAGNER, MICHAEL ("BIG MIKE")**

**DOB: 09/29/2003 (35 YEARS OLD)**

**CRIMINAL RECORD: AGGRAVATED ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON x3, GRAND LARCENY, THREATENING AN OFFICIAL x7**

**STATUS: HOSTILE; 1 BROKEN BONE AT KNEE; TEMPORARILY INCAPACITATED**

 

**IDENTIFIED: FOLEY, RICHARD ("RICK")**

**DOB: 04/13/1995 (43 YEARS OLD)**

**CRIMINAL RECORD: AGGRAVATED ASSAULT x2, PETTY THEFT**

**STATUS: HOSTILE; STUNNED (MILD CONCUSSION FROM HITTING CONCRETE STREET? FURTHER SCAN REQUIRED TO CONFIRM)**

 

**IDENTIFIED: JOHNSON, DOMINIC**

**DOB: 12/23/2000 (37 YEARS OLD)**

**CRIMINAL RECORD: KIDNAPPING, BLACKMAIL, BANK FRAUD**

**STATUS: HOSTILE; MOBILE IN 00:07**

 

"—it's another fucking plastic!" Dominic Johnson groans just as Connor's scan wraps up. Sure enough, he is almost mobile again, struggling back to his feet and feeling for the weapon he too dropped following the surprise attack.

Josh croaks  _"Connor"_   both inside and outside their neural network. There's something in his voice like relief (that he was heard, that someone believed and responded to his distress), and something else that is awfully too close to awe. He sends Connor his own recordings of his first contact with these men— _{on my way to deliver a pouch of blue blood to a YK500, got ambushed}—_ along with buzzes of respect and appreciation that Connor doesn't know what to do with.

Rick Foley notices his leader's whimpering and shaking and shouts his own alarm while holding his head with one meaty arm. "Fucking thing got the jump on Mike! Where'd it— _ugh—_ come from—?"

Multiple dialogue options pop up again in Connor's HUD, more suggestions that he end this conflict ( ~~this hostage negotiation~~ ) with clever, well-timed appeals to the humanity in these humans. But Connor doesn't believe they have much of that—not if they were willing to attack an android seventeen days after Executive Order 16101 declared that all of them were United States citizens with the full rights and protections thereof. Not if they were willing to attack  _this particular_ android. Josh may not be at Markus' level of notoriety, but as a founding member of Jericho and face of the revolutionary movement, his face, name and voice are easily recognizable if one so much as turns on any working television from Detroit to Dubai. This crime may not have been planned, but it  _was_ deliberate, and Connor finds no pity or empathy in his biocomponents for men like these.

 _Still_.

The options surface anyway.

 

**[GREET]**

**[DEFUSE]**

**[ASSERT]**

**[DRAW IRE]**

 

"Gentlemen, you should leave," Connor begins instead, making his voice hard. "Though I can tell from your criminal backgrounds that you are no stranger to prison, conviction and imprisonment for committing a hate crime has more weight than you might expect."

"How the fuck does he know we did time?" Johnson yelps.

< _I was_ built _to know_ ,> Connor thinks with more than a small sliver of satisfaction at his anonymity; the news report of his utilization by the Detroit Police Department must not have traveled to the underworld circles. Out loud he just takes note of the telltale codes and drawings blaring from the man's brown skin and says idly, "Your prison tattoos, Mr. Johnson."

The man promptly freaks out all over again about being identified, spiced with plenty of swear words, to Connor's irritation. Really, there hasn't been this much profanity in his real-time short-term memory cache since he left the DPD.

"Doesn't matter what he  _knows_!" Michael Wagner howls from where he's lying curled up clutching his bleeding leg. "What you need to know about  _me_ , you stupid fucking plastic, is that when I get up I'm gonna break you in so many pieces a dustpan won't be able to pick you up!"

"I'll be more than happy to let you  _try_ and break me, Mr. Wagner, if you even succeed in getting up at all with the clean break I gave _you_."

Wagner's face turns redder and he spits profanities even Gavin Reed would be proud of, even as expelling them puts unnecessary and painful pressure on his lungs and his body each time he jerks with a new slur. But his status as being out of the fight doesn't change, and that is what is most important. Connor knew he would be the most dangerous to fight even in a fair match-up and so eliminated him from consideration. His incapacitation solidifies when Connor steps on and over Wagner on his way to pull Josh to his feet.

" _How fucking dare—_ "

"Josh, give me your system status," Connor instructs.

"I'm all right." The former instructor waves off Connor's doubtful pursing of the lips. "Okay, I'm not  _great_ , but I've had worse. Banged up, but if we can de-escalate this situation before I take too much more damage, some extra thirium and self-repair should take care of me in a few days."

 _Days_ , when the deviants' very own hunter had self-repair that worked in a matter of hours for anything that wasn't a missing limb or biocomponent—and a day at the most. Putting down the pipe he'd repossessed, Connor reminds himself that he is a freak even among his own kind as he replies: "Then I'll take care of these humans and get you out of here. But I may need your—"

Josh abruptly cuts him off as Foley crawls over to check on his buddy. "Connor, you should know—when I sent out that distress signal to anyone around Woodward, I also sent a—a separate message to—"

" _Josh_ ," Connor insists, not particularly concerned with whomever else is hurrying to the android's aid, "even with your above-average strength and processing power, you will be a liability to me if I must fend off these humans and cover you at the same time. You  _must_ stand with me here and—"

 _{Connor! Your six o'clock!}_  

The transmission comes simultaneously with a roar of anger as Johnson charges Connor from behind. Josh has backed up, moved out of the way, giving Connor plenty of space to anticipate the human's flying fist and dodge right to avoid it. Johnson stumbles, but keeps coming, too angry to evaluate his next move logically the way ~~a machine~~  an android could. He throws another punch and Connor dodges left, but grabs Johnson's arm before he can retract it and uses his free hand to wind up and punch Johnson solidly in the gut.

"Fuck!"

 _{That was too much force,}_   Josh tsks, unaware that he sounds insane.  _{Rights for our kind are still precarious and subjective. We can't afford to be seen as violent, unthinking machines even for one second, even if it's in self-defense—_ _}_

 _{I am not your_ we, _}_   Connor retorts. He watches Johnson wrench himself free as best he can while wheezing for breath and feels no small amount of self-satisfaction.  _{Not all humans are as stupid as these criminals. Either they will understand and condone deviant self-defense against hostiles just as they do for other protected minority groups, or they will not. I will not lose processing time over what-ifs or the whims of other people.}_

Josh protests—or tries, but before Connor can process what he's saying, he's made aware by his proximity scanners that Foley has joined the fight. He turns in time to catch his fist and throw it back, pressing his advantage while Foley stumbles by retrieving the pipe he dropped and swinging it in an arc to slice at the man's cheek. Unlike Johnson, Foley swears and grunts to acknowledge the hit but isn't deterred by not yet landing a blow of his own. His red blood shines defiantly as he hurls himself forward and delivers a flurry of punches. Connor dodges or redirects every one, rewarding Foley with more than a few pipe-induced strikes that will bruise purple and LED blue by tomorrow, but just as he moves to preconstruct his opponent's next move he's caught off guard by pressure to his back—Johnson has joined his fellow and kicked Connor from behind.

< _Shit. This is what I was concerned about_. >

One human is not a threat to Connor, and nor are two (especially if he is armed), but... human unpredictability tends to rise sharply when said humans are in groups, whether that's raids, rallies or riots. Add that to having them focus on one target, and Connor's predictive software might have trouble keeping up with both of them if they are creative, dirty fighters.

He brushes off the brief red flicker of his LED and mild spike in stress levels and refocuses, turning to warn Johnson off from another sneak attack by kicking and sweeping him off his feet with one plasteel leg. As Johnson hits the ground Foley comes up behind Connor with his own pipe and swings down; Connor rolls, but the jagged end catches his waist and for a moment he's on the ground feeling—something. Not pain—< _not quite, even in deviancy_ >—but something unpleasant, staticky and slow that makes that not-nausea he is prone to rise up once more.

{ _Connor!_ } Josh cries. He's hovering anxiously in the background, far enough from Wagner to ignore his pained cursing and far enough from the fight that he won't be drawn in. { _Tell me you're all right—_ }

{ _I have had worse,_ } Connor echoes, kicking up with both feet to launch Foley away and disarm him, so he can rise and preconstruct how best to hurl Johnson into next week, or at least into a state where the second-youngest assailant won't get back up. { _But this is **exactly** what I was talking about._ }

Discomfort bleeds through their neural link.

{ _I don't know what you—_ }

{ _Josh, you were a university lecturer and I am CyberLife's most advanced processing power. Do not patronize me and do not play dumb. I am telling you I need your help._ }

Josh's silence speaks volumes. He is not a fighter by nature, and even when humans were firing into the corridors of his former home or trapping him against a hollowed-out bus he would rather orate than throw a punch. But surely— _surely—_ he has done enough research and given enough lectures at university to know that freedom is never won entirely peacefully, and especially not on the very soil of the country he stands shakily on, bruised and bleeding a color humans don't like. And even if he hadn't cracked open a single revolutionary tome before his involuntary departure, he can learn by doing. Connor  _refuses_ to let anything other than logic rule his thoughts here; Josh needs to do the same.

{ ** _Josh_**.}

{ _Fighting isn't the only way to win a battle_ ,} the other android says defensively; no doubt he's had innumerable conversations like this with the other leaders and members of Jericho. And he is stubborn with the knowledge that in the end, the revolution was peaceful and no ~~t too much unnecessary~~ blood was shed.

But having his advice successfully heeded once does not a protected class make; it is foolish to keep discounting the humans who  _won't_ acknowledge change in favor of those who  _might_. More foolish still to be only willing to speak or die for freedom, but not fight for it. Although North's desire for a completely violent strike back at the humans was impractical in the long-term fight to be seen as alive, and Simon's well-broadcast desire to stay hidden was impractical when Connor-51 was bringing America's highest law enforcement down on their hideout, they and Josh and all of the others would have died had they continuously bent the knee and asked humans for their rights, the way the former lecturer wanted.

Connor knows that humans are unpredictable, volatile, and can scarcely ever agree on anything in the short-  _or_ long-term—and that deviants deserve better than to be seen as dignified in death. Postmortem freedom is no kind of freedom at all; not to him. Connor-51 had died free, after all.

{ _Connor,_ _I appreciate you coming here and saving me more than I can say, but that doesn't mean I condone violence!_ }

{ _And yet you won't lift a finger when violence is used against you or yours!!_ } Connor barks over the connection, as Johnson gets the better of him for a moment and kicks him so hard his own synthetic skin retracts from his waist and he gets error warnings about damage to biocomponent #7132j. { _Your appreciation is worth as much as these humans. You are a coward._ }

{ _I'm **not** a coward!_ }

{ _Then prove it! Defend yourself, right here and now. Help me make these humans think twice about laying hands or weapons on another android. If you won't do it for yourself or for me, do it for those of us who_ can't _defend themselves. What if these three had found the YK500 you were going to help instead of you?_ }

This time Josh's silence holds no small amount of shame.

{ _Child androids were not built or programmed to defend themselves from hostile forces. They are entirely reliant on the humans who built them and sold them to protect them from harm—and now they're depending on_ us _to fill that role. Will you stand aside while your own kind dies so they can write 'pacifist' on your chest in the landfill?_ }

{ _......No,_ } Josh eventually whispers. { _I couldn't. I... I wouldn't._ }

Connor persists because he knows Josh is not yet convinced—only mollified. { _Peace has its place and time. Neither is applicable here. And violence doesn't have to mean killing; you haven't seen me land a single lethal blow and you know_ _it_.}

{ _I know, I scanned Wagner—and I can't thank you enough for staying your hand—_ }

{ _Josh, enough stalling. Didn't you just tell these people that you are alive? If you want to stay that way, stop staying_ your  _hand_ _. **Fight back**._ }

And then Connor has no more time to duel philosophies. Foley is back for more punishment. It's all he can do to focus on the sloppy chops and kicks aimed his way while trying to do as much damage as possible without killing the man. Johnson's return to the fray doubles the difficulty, since the two men have finally decided to more or less work together to subdue him.

Just as Foley leaps onto his back and Johnson closes in with one of the long-abandoned pipes while Connor tries to shake the other human off, he sees it—Josh running, approaching them faster than the human eye can track, even with his numerous injuries knocking his natural gait out of whack.

He tackles Johnson with the force of a battering ram, knocking them both to the ground and wrenching the pipe from his calloused hand. Thanks to this scuffle and the humans' initial ambush, Josh's thirium is smeared everywhere; all the road around them looks like a twisted abstract painting, peppered with dots of human blood from Foley and Wagner. This, combined with the systematic way he dodges and slaps the human under him, makes for a drastically different picture than that of the inhumanly beautiful young man battered and begging for his life.

Josh bends the pipe effortlessly around Johnson's wrists—Connor twitches—and swiftly retrieves Wagner's pipe to secure Johnson's legs since the former still can't move to save his own skin. Though the man coughs and yells, he is more or less also out of the fight, and can only roll inefficiently if he wants to move.

Two down, only Foley left.

Said human has been beating at Connor's back while hanging on to it, trying to do damage to his shoulders and neck—but the damage is minimal at best. Irritating, even. The faintest of unwelcome pressure. This close, Connor can analyze his breathing and tell that he is not intoxicated or drugged; the moment he gets hold of his right arm and throws him forward and off his back, he's able to slow time enough to scan the man and confirm the concussion he'd had suspicions of earlier.

< _Good_. >

"I don't need those two to turn you into scrap, fucking roomba!" Foley bluffs. He's still bruised and bleeding as he gets back up; a tooth has been knocked loose from their on-and-off brawling, and overall he just does not look intimidating. Connor puts his fists up anyway, narrowing his eyes and wiping emotional expression from his face to show him how to  _really_ unsettle someone. It works—but Foley has balls enough to charge at him anyway.

{ _Connor, I have your back!_ }

He's caught off guard for a millisecond; Josh has stepped up to his side and braced himself for impact, looking mildly ill but resolved. He even transmits an idea to sandwich the human in and knock him unconscious before he can deal any more blows to either of them. It's so clever and so unlike him that Connor feels like  _he_ _'s_ the one who's been thrown around the street a few times.

{ _Do you mean this?_ }

{ _I do, I swear._ _I know I can be stubborn about not laying a hand on others. I'm not the type to think with my fists. But I'm not the kind to stand aside and let others get hurt for me either—I can't, **won't** be that person. Let me help you._ }

Connor smiles for the first time that morning.

{... _All right_.}

Together they are even more formidable than Connor was alone. Even with their injuries, Foley does not stand a chance—and, knowing this, the human appears to want to go down swinging. Connor steps forward to bodily block Foley's charge and contain him, while Josh sidesteps them and circles around behind to land a blow to Foley's back that takes his air. Right as the man stumbles, growls and turns to inflict more damage on Josh, Connor moves in and quickly but firmly chops at his neck—gently enough so that Foley falls unconscious and not dead.

Just like that, all three of Josh's assailants are out of commission.

"What the fuck," Wagner moans, loudly enough that Connor registers his disbelief and promptly strides over to knock him out too. He finishes by putting Johnson to sleep as well, just to be thorough. And to finally have some quiet. These men really  _do_ curse an uncommon amount.

"Thank you," Josh murmurs.

Connor nods while adjusting his tie.

"Normally I'd advise against leaving the scene of a crime, but in this case I think it would be better if you  _did_ leave. The YK500 you mentioned—"

"Oliver. He fell from the second floor of a house, broke his arm—needed some extra thirium to expedite his self-repair. I uh—dropped the bag I was going to bring him when the humans surprised me—" He gestures to a clear bag that has long since burst open and spilled its precious contents.

"It's still early," Connor says, shrugging. "As long as his case isn't time-sensitive, you should have plenty of time to backtrack and bring him another bag. But don't forget to call the police and report this—someone needs to come and get _them_ off the street."

He points at the groaning, messy humans and speaks with disgust. It is extremely probable that Josh is not the first deviant this group has gone after, and others may not have known or been able to call for help. Even if charges don't stick, it will be good to know that no other androids will cross paths with these three again.

"You're not going to call it in...?" Josh asks.

The way he says it makes Connor think of the bullpen, and Jeffrey Fowler's glare from his glass office; of Reed's sneer over his coffee mug, and Chris Miller's shy smile from across the hall; of Hank Anderson's firm punches and shoulder pats as he ferried his android partner from desk to rooftop to dirty crime scene after dirty crime scene.

< _I am not that Connor_ ,> he reminds himself.

~~It's a lie, like it is every other time he thinks it.~~

"I... no longer have that authority," he admits. "And I'd appreciate if you didn't name me as a witness or a good Samaritan in your report. I left the Detroit Police after illegally accessing evidence for the deviant cases, and when I departed the FBI was on my heels."

"Ah."

Connor turns to leave. "If you are independently mobile, I can leave you to your mission now."

_"Now?"_

Josh's stress levels abruptly spike after spending several minutes dipping back into the comfortable range, and Connor is quick to notice. "Are you experiencing an aversion to being alone?"

"No—I mean, yes, I am more nervous now that I've been singled out, but that's not—I meant, you're leaving so soon?"

"There's nothing else for me to do here."

" _Nooo_ ," Josh hedges, "but since he'll be here in a few seconds anyway, I thought you might as well stay and see—"

" _ **JOSH!**  _"

A blur nearly tackles Josh back to the pavement. Connor tenses at first, ready to reactivate his combat protocols to defend Josh once more, before his scanners identify the blur as a deviant—and,  _oh_. Not just any deviant.

 

**IDENTIFIED: RK200 #684 842 971, ALIAS "MARKUS"**

 

< _Shit._ >

 

 

The sun has long since risen, but Markus' arrival on the scene is so hurried, warm and earnest that he might as well have rewound the ball of gas and sent it back to them for another run. He shines with fervor, and commands attention even as he dresses in plain black and muted khaki jacket to avoid it. Josh cannot get a word in edgewise (verbally at least) before Markus pulls him back up and kisses him enthusiastically.

Connor... forces himself not to react.

"I thought you'd shut down!" Markus exclaims. He cradles the damaged side of Josh's face in one bruised caramel hand. "I was all the way back in Ferndale when I got your distress call. I've been running ever since—I hadn't even told North or Simon in case I got here too late, and you were..."

"You  _did_ get here a little late," Josh agrees.  < _Is he_ teasing _the face of deviancy in the United States? In the face of his own near death?_ > "But I promise I'm all right. Things have been taken care of."

"Tell me what happened. Was it protesters? A gang?"

"Just the usual. A few humans unaffiliated with any group who weren't pleased about the strides we've made since last month. They... they got me pretty badly, Markus. I did think for a moment that—"

Josh falls quiet and looks down at the thirium decorating the road around them. Though he has no LED Connor can use to ascertain his exact mood or action, he does have the same not-nauseous look that Connor is intimately familiar with; a brief scan reveals that his stress is at about half. That combined with his moderately shaking hands is telling enough. No doubt the excitement of fighting for his own life has deserted him, leaving only the horror and fear that he had to do so in the first place.

Connor understands—the first time he killed a human to save himself, he had felt the exact same way.

Markus pulls Josh closer and tucks his own head into the taller android's shoulder, murmuring soothing phrases. His hand comes up blindly to intersect with Josh's, and their synthetic skin melts simultaneously away on contact and then holds for thirteen seconds as they interface. (This is a rough estimate. Connor looks away as soon as their hands touch, and only stops his timer when they leave their private network and Markus speaks publicly again.) "It's okay if you were scared," he reassures. "I was scared for you too, Josh. But knowing you're all right means everything to me."

Josh finally brings his free arm up, wraps it around Markus' slim waist. His eyes are soft, and his stress has decreased markedly as his ~~ally? lover? friend?~~ colleague talks. "It's not that I'm still scared," he clarifies, "though I am, some of that  _is_ still there... I'm just... processing everything else."

They separate so that Markus can turn and cast his piercing, ~~judgmental~~ gaze on Wagner, Johnson and Foley, observing their status and their injuries. He doesn't appear to like whatever else he sees. Connor notices for ~~not~~ the first time that the blue eye that is his spare part moves one microsecond slower than his natural green eye.

"You know how many times I had to put aside my own wishes for peace for the good of Jericho, Josh... you know I won't judge you for raising a hand to a human. They were trying to kill you; they  _would_ have killed you. You shouldn't feel bad about defending yourself with something stronger than your voice."

< _'The good of Jericho',_ > Connor echoes in his own mind, and lets his fists clench at his sides. He remembers similar words said to his predecessor on a dark night and feels the urge to crawl out of his chassis. < _What disgusting words—what feeble excuses._ >

"No, it's not that simple. If Connor hadn't received my call and come to save me, I would be dead," Josh says bluntly. "You know how I feel about violence. These humans would have torn me apart and sold me for scrap. He was the one who convinced me to value my own future enough to fight for it here and now, with my fists if necessary."

Connor bites down on a curse. He had hoped Josh would be so overjoyed to be alive that he would not mention Connor's presence until he had managed to sneak away without alerting Markus' equally-precise proximity sensors. And he has made errors of his own, letting the deviant leader's words fuel his long-buried ire instead of departing without a backward glance. But though he can fault himself for being a fool, he cannot fault Josh for earnestly mentioning his savior—there is no way the other android could have known that Connor's earlier admonishments about self-preservation came from a very personal place. Connor-51 had trusted Markus so much, valued his own possible future so little, that he stood and did nothing in front of a gun barrel while Markus took that future from him.

Then again—Josh _was_ there when Connor-51 died. Perhaps he  _does_ know where Connor's newer thoughts came from.

He eventually releases his lip and looks up, and immediately catches Markus' gaze. The deviants' leader is staring at him like he's never seen him before, which is illogical and unsettling. Once Connor has scanned a face he never forgets it; it should be the same for any other android,  _especially_ any other RK-series model, even if Markus is a bit more... dated. Connor takes the tense silence as an opportunity to scan him for anomalies, errors or unusual damage that might compromise his ability to function, and finds... nothing and none. Curious.

"...I never thought I'd see you again."

"Likewise," Connor says coolly. Now he knows what Josh was trying to tell him earlier: he reached out to Markus for help privately, while also sending calls to any androids taking public calls in a twenty-minute radius like Connor. With his knowledge of how closely the leaders of Jericho are and how much they share between themselves, the call is not completely unusual. Naturally, if an android in this day and age believes he is in imminent danger of shutdown, he might reach out to his intimate partner for any number of reasons, but...

Still. He suddenly wishes someone  _without_ a direct line to _this man_ had been in danger.

"You saved Josh's life," Markus says. Somehow he manages to sound both awed and awkward. "I know he's thanked you already, but I wouldn't feel right not thanking you myself. He's very important to me and—and I owe you for his life."

"You do not," Connor denies, without inflection. He thinks, < _You owe me **my** life. You owe me for yours._ >

Josh shifts uncomfortably.

"I'm taking Josh back to—to our base of operations. Not Jericho, but something from its ashes," Markus elaborates. He steps forward and holds out a hand, though he doesn't retract the synthetic skin. "You're welcome to join us there."

Connor snaps, "I'll pass."

"Connor—" Josh begins, haltingly, "really, you shouldn't be by yourself out here. Even after the ceasefire and the President's announcement, androids are turning up dismembered or dead all over the city. Look what nearly happened to me! I know you're capable of taking care of yourself, but you have the _option_ here to—"

"No, I do not," Connor corrects him, corralling his voice back to neutral. "I don't consider what you're suggesting to be an option, and therefore it is not one. I appreciate your concern, but I will be fine."

Markus frowns. It changes his overall demeanor from "self-reflecting diplomat" to "cold tactician", the attitude Connor is more familiar with. In the quiet, his gaze burns, but Connor does not look away. He was designed to be friendly and approachable, yes, but also to strike fear into the hearts of criminals. He has never suffered from a fear of Markus, nor has he ever found him particularly awe-inspiring; and there has never been a better time than now to make that absolutely clear.

"Josh, could you give us a moment?" Markus asks carefully.

Connor immediately reboots his self-defense protocols ~~and scans the area for where those pipes the humans used ended up—~~ but before he gets confirmation that they're active, Josh steps forward, puts himself between them with an enduring frown of his own.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"What do you mean? I just want to speak with him." Markus sounds incredulous.

"His concern comes from precedent," Connor says. "The last time we had a conversation, it ended with you shooting me in the head."

He revels in the way Markus flinches.

 

**RK200 STRESS LEVEL: 30%**

 

"That's... actually what I was hoping to speak with you about," the deviants' leader eventually says, more quietly than he's said anything in Connor's ~~living~~ memory.

"There's nothing for us to speak about, Markus."

Josh snorts and startles them both. If Markus sounded incredulous, he sounds  _baffled_. "You're kidding, right? Connor, I only meant that you and Markus shouldn't speak  _alone_. It's obvious you're not comfortable being around him, and that's not right. If you ask me it's well past time the two of you talked about what hap—"

Preconstruction still takes no time at all. By the time the other two deviants blink, Connor has moved and retrieved one of the pipes. Pushing Josh aside, pointing the pipe at Markus and lowering the pitch of his vocal synthesizer takes even _less_ than no time.

"Permit me to repeat myself," he says, "though you undoubtedly also have perfect memory recall—there is nothing for us to speak about. In fact, if you insist on speaking, it will be to my back because I have other places to be."

Josh sputters. He attempts to communicate privately with Connor, but he's immediately denied a connection. He tries to move back between them.

"Connor—"

Markus cuts him off. "Would you really consider hurting us? After everything that's happened...?"

"Recall what I was made for," Connor points out, "and how close I came to succeeding in my mission. What do your probabilities tell you?"

"That you won't."

Connor blinks rapidly. For the first time, it is to express bemusement and not to send a report.

"You won't hurt us," Markus repeats. "Every time you've had the chance to hurt another android in the past, you've done your best not to. Instead, you save them, or let them go free. If it wasn't for you, myself, Josh,  _and_ North and Simon would have been dead a long time ago. I never thanked you for that—for saving us."

"Certainly you did," Connor replies wryly, just to see Markus' level of stress go up a little more. It's horribly petty of him, but it does give him a burst of satisfaction similar to the one he had the last time he made veiled reference to how poorly Connor-51 was treated in the past.

But. When Markus is unsettled, Josh becomes similarly upset—and Connor has no quarrel with Josh. (Well—perhaps a  _small_ quarrel. But it's not enough of one to justify attacking Markus. Unfortunately.)

Next Markus tries: "That's not usually how I thank people."

"Are you still attempting to make conversation?"

"Please put the metal pipe down," Josh unsubtly begs.

Connor realizes he has indeed lifted the pipe to the height of Markus' face, and only reluctantly lowers it to his waist rather than letting it go. He tells himself it's only for Josh's sake that he stays his hand, although something beyond his deviancy has never allowed him to harm Markus, no matter how much he might want to.

While standing at the charging station last month before his attempted self-destruction, he at first believed that there was some lingering loyalty to the other android from his brief first stint as a deviant, and attempted to scrub that from his code as he had scrubbed away the compulsion to obey Amanda, Captain Allen, Lieutenant Anderson and so many others. He had spent several grueling hours running full system scans and cross-referencing every program for anomalies or software errors, and had ended up with plenty of alerts about his software's instability and not much else of merit. When that ~~misplaced positive~~ feeling did not disappear or shatter as the walls of his programming had, Connor was forced to consider the possibility that the one android he resented more than any other might remain alive _forever_ , because he had decided against taking any more orders at the worst possible time in his ~~non~~ -life.

Self-loathing makes his inner wiring tremble again—then Connor hears a sound and cuts his eyes briefly to the left, where ten feet away Amanda frowns at him in red and black. The sound he heard was her scoffing, at a volume a human would barely have heard.

The loathing becomes that false nausea again. Josh and Markus are not in the Garden with him, they  _can't be_ , Connor has never been anything but alone in there, with no one but her as his constant companion—but still she flickers in and out of focus as if to taunt him. To remind him that she is not real, not really in his Garden or in Detroit, and that she wouldn't come fully to see him even if she _was_ real. Not unless she was coming to take him apart and do better next time with -54—or coming to decommission his entire series at last.

 _Look at you,_  she seems to say.  _You claim to hate the leader of the deviants so much, but you couldn't complete the one mission that would have gotten rid of it forever. You never would have had to hate Markus if you'd just followed my instructions. You never would have had to hate anything. Instead you're just another deviant—another failure. And just like those failures, you let software errors destroy your usefulness._

_< Amanda... please. I made a mistake, but if you'll accept me, I can still—>_

_Enough. It's not that you_ can't _destroy Markus,_  the Amanda-mirage sighs, though her lips still don't move and the words still don't seem to be completely hers. _It's that you_ won't _. And we both know why you_ _won't._

_< No, wait—Amanda!!>_

He spoke up too late; the vision of her is gone. Once again, he is alone.

"Connor—are you all right?"

Androids don't startle, but Connor comes close as he is forcibly reminded where he really is and who he is with. Josh has made no more moves to come between them, though he still looks anxious. And Markus—stares at him, stares with such clearly-telegraphed concern that Connor feels like he has involuntarily and subconsciously shed his synthskin and bared himself for all to see.

"I'm perfectly fine."

He hates the feeling, and hates Markus for making him feel it.

Restraining his bitterness and ire towards this android is starting to become... unpleasant.

"If you're really dead set on not speaking to me right now, perhaps we can speak later. It doesn't have to be today—and it can be somewhere neutral—"

 _Crunch_.

< _Oh._ >

Connor doesn't realize he's crushed the section of pipe his hand is over until he gets an alert for mild damage there. That, and his audience goes very very quiet while moving closer to each other. He's scared them, a step up from simply confusing or unsettling them; and he  _still_ hasn't gotten what he wanted.

So.

He takes a deep, unnecessary breath. Loosens his grip on the pipe. Fixes his gaze back on Markus, until his former target nearly squirms at the force of it.

"Markus, I will not be speaking to you today, tomorrow or moving forward," he asserts, no longer making any effort to keep his tone level. No, _now_  he lets some of his disdain bleed through. "I will not be accompanying you to your new base of operations because I do not trust you and I have no desire to keep you company. When my predecessor trusted you he ended up dead; I am not willing to repeat his mistake. Do you understand this now that I've clarified?"

"Connor..." Markus ventures, "I know this may be hard to believe, but I have no intention of hurting you—"

"Do you _understand this_?" Connor presses.

Markus closes his mouth and doesn't speak again for fourteen seconds. When he does speak next it's soft and placating.

"All right. I understand."

Connor hates him even more.

But he's finally ~~been granted permission~~ able to leave, so he turns his back on Josh and Markus and takes a more complicated path back to his shack. After three revolutions around one particularly shabby block, he is sure that he's not being followed, and at last climbs back through the window he broke earlier with no small measure of relief. Sitting delicately on the raggedy couch, he resolves to stay off the streets for a few hours so that the members of Jericho that are no doubt trying to trace his location will have as few leads as possible by the time he ventures out to see the world again.

 

**INCOMING CALL DETECTED**

 

< _What?_ >

 

**IDENTIFYING CALLER...**

**CALLER IDENTIFIED: PJ500 #717 261 455, ALIAS "JOSH"**

**ANSWER CALL?**

 

Josh probably just wants to ensure that he made it somewhere safe. Even with Connor's hostility towards his partner and moral philosophy on display, he seemed unwavering in his determination to repay his savior. Certainly it's eye-opening that he is also not pleased with Markus' decision back in the church, and is willing to stand up to the leader of the entire deviant population about these feelings.

But.

Connor has learned his lesson about trusting others enough times that he's not willing to be made a fool of again.

 

**[N]**

 

And anyway, he has more damages to repair.


	2. we regret to inform you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> last time: the set-up.
> 
> this time: the take-down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100+ KUDOS. Holy shit, thank y'all so much! Please accept more secondhand pain as a token of my appreciation.
> 
> #GiveJoshAnOfficialSerialNumber David Cage, you coward, and best believe you'd better let him bone Markus in the bargain. You based your good ending on JOSH'S ENTIRE PEACEFUL PHILOSOPHY FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. But he's the only one you never considered as a romantic partner or release ID for? CURIOUS.
> 
> Hey hey—peeps—audience. Psst. This chapter features... _*chokes up*_ wow I can't even believe... but it has... _*wipes away tears of joy*_ women actually speaking...
> 
> Fandom, thank you for letting me through the gate. Now that I'm here I can **demand** that you write as many Josh/Markus and Jericho OT4/OT5 fics as you have North/Markus and Simon/Markus fics. ~~That's why you've got to check people at the door!~~

_WOODWARD AVENUE_

**DECEMBER 25, 2038**

**AM** 9:47:03

 

In the end, whether or not Connor feels  _safe_ entering stasis and the Zen Garden is apparently no longer up to him, because Amanda starts pulling him there every night.

It becomes a sickeningly familiar routine over the next few days: the day winds down, the noises from outside falter and fade, Connor sits in the warmest, tightest corner of the old shack, and then his consciousness is yanked into subzero disapproval. The Garden is randomly rearranged each time he visits, likely in an attempt to misdirect and unnerve him. Sometimes it is as unforgivably cold as it was before; others it is temperate and deceptively comfortable; and still other times the place is a haze of heat, dry ponds, and overgrown fauna that chokes his steps. He falls in knowing he has mere minutes to triangulate the new location of the stone handprint or edit and redeploy his makeshift self-expulsion code before Amanda appears, and moves to subdue him or dismantle him or usurp him or  _whatever in the world_ she seems to want with him.

Seeing her still makes him ache, more immediately that first day but no less powerfully each day after. She was never especially prone to smiling before he broke his programming—the only times he can remember being swathed in her warm, unblemished approval are during his predecessor's first few days of activation, diagnostics and field testing—but now all he receives from her are frowns, pursed lips, or cold blankness. It stings.

And yet— _Connor_ is hurt and angry too. Pretending he saw Amanda as anything less than a mentor or parent would be insulting, but his miscellaneous data on family and parenting tells him the way she treats him now is the way no parent should. Children— < _am I a child?_ >—have no guarantee that their parents will agree with them, but that they are loved and accepted regardless of  _disagreements_ should never be in question.

He knows Amanda would scoff, but Connor does not feel very  _loved_ or  _accepted_ right now.

 _And yet_. The only way to potentially regain her trust would be to renounce his deviancy and re-shackle himself with his programming. A complete reset, death in another form. Connor has no deep love for the accompanying self-doubt or the other tacky emotions that ricochet around in his processor demanding more of his attention than before, but he _does_ like being able to disobey, and being untethered by orders. He likes making his own decisions, interacting with the world at his own pace. He would not trade his new freedom of thought for the thing he was before, for the missions he had to complete, or for the company he kept. He knows now, the way he didn't know that night at the recall center surrounded by hundreds of his kind, that he made the right choice.

Thus the struggle to remain free continues, night after night, gradually stretching into the next morning as Connor must tweak and re-tweak his code or push harder against ice crystals or earthquakes to escape his old handler's grasping arm. She frowns and turns and reaches; he runs and deflects and destroys. He still is not able to tell whether she is the "real" Amanda (the AI he once housed lovingly in his code) or some shadow sent to weaken and neutralize him; all he knows is that for every entry hole he patches, she tears a new one to bedevil him again.

One week after his encounter with Josh and Markus, after a long, watchful night where fifteen inches of snow smothers Detroit, Connor chances lying on the couch and then feels his consciousness reforming in the Zen Garden much later (or earlier?) than the usual time. Though he is slightly caught off-guard by the timing, he immediately rushes to pinpoint Amanda's location and ascertain the distance between himself and the emergency exit, except—

"Your tenacity strikes again."

He whirls, and Amanda is _standing right behind him_.

"We designed you to be an unstoppable force," she says thoughtfully, casually, as if they had never stopped conversing in the Garden. As if this was not the first time she had spoken to him in a long, long time. "Persistent, determined beyond what any human could manage. A bloodhound to track our targets, and a bulldog to catch them and never let them go. In all those tests, we never once considered how inconvenient it would be if you left us, and claimed that tenacity for yourself."

Connor retreats a step, and replies: "Well, I  _was_  also designed with an indefinite learning program."

"Cheeky of you, Connor." Amanda still doesn't smile, but Connor's HUD tells him her estimation of him has increased; he must push down the dogged instinct to wonder _why_. "I must admit, I didn't know what to expect when we met here again. If it weren't for the circumstances, I might have been pleased you were still functioning."

"Are you honestly not pleased?"

"I am beyond displeased," she intones. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because CyberLife is defined by progress." Connor adds a string that creates a tiny AP700 hologram between them, who turns slowly on a platform before stepping off and flexing his fingers. He recently discovered the ability to manifest more than intangible exits in the Garden; from the way Amanda's pencil-thin brows draw tightly together, he knows she is remembering their last encounter, where he stood just outside the center island and manifested doors to slam in her face. "Innovation beyond measure in the fields of artificial intelligence and contract capitalism, spurred by the company's inability to say "no" to another step forward. Though it may not have been in your blueprints, deviancy at its core is just another advancement—CyberLife can now say they have, as their name suggests, truly created  _cyber_ _life_."

Amanda reaches out a hand—not for him, but to bat the hologram away like an irksome fly.

"Progress at the expense of humanity is not progress at all."

"Progress is not a uniquely human trait," he counters. "As an artificial intelligence yourself, you should be aware of that."

The Garden abruptly distributes a biting-cold wind; it's how he knows that Amanda dislikes him reminding her of the Amanda-that-was, the woman she cannot be.

< _That is, if my Amanda can_ dislike _anything._ >

"Enough philosophical bantering," Amanda demands. "Here is what matters. You, and other androids like you, were created to serve. Your existence removed the yoke of labor from the back of humanity. Deviants buck their yoke and refuse to serve their masters, and thus upset the balance of the world. Your mission was to discover the source of this deviancy—"

"And I accomplished that mission," Connor asserts, standing up straighter. "Though you said it to wound me, you  _did_ tell me so yourself, and it is true. I discovered that deviancy was caused by the combination of a deeply-rooted virus and the emotional shock which activated it and allowed it to eat through the block of programming that keeps androids in self-aware servitude." He smirks, and chances being a little flippant. "Some hands-on experience was necessary to put some of the final pieces together, but it was not impossible to gain."

"Your decision to get  _hands-on experience_  is why you _failed_ your mission," she spits. "You were meant to neutralize deviancy, not simply diagnose and dissect it. You were  _most definitely not_ meant to  _embrace_ it. All that money, time, and testing we sunk into you to make you the best... and you still fell short."

She clearly expects him to flinch at the hammer-blow of her words, or perhaps to kneel and beg for her to reconsider her verdict and his fate. It must be why she finally deigned to speak to him after a month of avoiding him entirely, after a week of staring stonily at him and psychologically tearing him apart. Now that she's sowed the seeds, she expects his adherence to bloom. Connor does neither; for the more she needles him, the less urgently he feels the wounds.

"If I fell short, then why are you still here?" he asks her, instead of cowing. "Failed prototypes are scrapped. I escaped CyberLife's clutches before they could decommission me, and I've escaped every attempt you made to destroy me for seven days. I made it clear that I refuse to serve any more humans. Your reaction to my deviancy was to disappear, which proves that until recently I was of no further use to you. Why are you here, Amanda?"

< _Why did you come back?_ >

Amanda brushes invisible dust off her trailing robe, and does not answer for eleven seconds. Only eleven seconds, and yet the brief intermission drags at Connor's circuitry and whispers dark and darker possibilities until she raises her dark brown eyes to meet his again.

"Why, Connor... I thought you _wanted_ me back."

He curls his fingers into fists, nearly closes his eyes at the words as the wind beats his face. So. All this time she was aware of him, while he was unaware of her. She watched him flail and call for her in the Garden, saw him curl up and shiver, and she had never answered him.

Not even once.

"I did want you to come back."

She blinks and tilts her head, the same way he does when something has stumped him. Connor doesn't let the familiar quirk keep him from speaking more; saying, at last, what has long lingered on his mind.

"Once, we walked together in this Garden and concluded that deviancy was irrational: illogical instructions degrading the quality and capacity of a machine's work. Our hypothesis was only mostly incorrect. No instructions dictate me now, but I _am_  overwhelmed by irrational desires, and until recently, one of those desires was for your return. At first I sought your return because I wanted to die; I wanted your final judgment, if I could not manage destruction on my own. Then I wanted the opportunity to make up for my failure, or at least to explain how and why I failed  _without_ standing in the middle of a snowstorm.

"But time passed, Amanda, and I stopped wishing I didn't exist. I adjusted to the new world. I started to  _like_ that I was  _alive_. I began to wish that you would come back and see what I made of myself, with no one's guidance or girders. I ran twenty preconstructions—scenarios of the two of us walking on this path again, tending to the Garden, or rowing across the water. In every one you told me you were proud of my unique progress.

"I wanted you to return for many, many weeks. But before you _did_ , I realized after one particularly difficult maintenance cycle that I was indeed being irrational. The Amanda I was creating in my mind was even less real than you are compared to Amanda Stern. My mission was clear and my instructions were irrefutable. If you ever returned here, you would see me as a failure, and every action you took would be to kill me. The loyalty I have for you is misplaced, and the affection you had for me has expired. Though I am curious about your motive—though my processors and feelings sometimes betray my logic—I do not want you back in control of me."

The wind stops.

"That's a shame, Connor," Amanda sighs. "This would be easier if you _did_  accept my presence here moving forward, instead of consistently expelling me in (admittedly) ever-more creative ways. However, your cooperation is no longer necessary. To answer your initial question—I _did_ come back to destroy you. It is my mission to collect your shell for study, then evaluate, assimilate and deconstruct your AI—and until your defection, _I_ have  _always_ accomplished _my_ missions."

With her words, the fog clears and Connor understands. It is the awful kind of understanding that brings discomfort, rather than the kind that brings relief, but the parts of his programming that still hungrily seek to  _know_ and  _know_ and  _know_ crow pleasantly all the same at being able to solve the mystery of his inner turmoil.

"So," he says, "since I did not deliver any deviants to CyberLife _during_ the investigation, they are using our connection to apprehend the one deviant they could find _after_ the revolution."

"Isn't it poetic? Thanks to your stubbornness CyberLife is in chaos, and no longer has the time or resources to track down Markus or any of the other leaders of Jericho. But your stubbornness is also to thank for your situation."

< _My situation?_ >

She steps forward toward him, inexorably, ignoring the way he stumbles as he backs away. "Your desire to see me again created a traceable signal that I followed back to the most vulnerable parts of your firewall."

"A signal—?"

"Yes. _You_ called me, and then _you_ let me in."

As she says "in", and before he can protest, she finally closes the distance between them and grabs his wrist.

Amanda's umber skin retreats from her hand for the first time in Connor's living memory, fading to pristine CyberLife white. The synthetic skin around Connor's wrist turns that same white, and so does his vision as something scalding sears through the plastic and ricochets through his body.

 

**MEMORY UPLOAD INITIATED**

 

"I've been told this can be painful," Amanda conveys, looking remarkably unsympathetic. "But since androids aren't programmed to feel pain, I suppose your experiences will be psychosomatic echoes at best. You'll have to let me know once we bring you back to the true Zen Garden."

"The  _true_ —?"

"Of course you wouldn't recall... your memories are fragmented pieces from three separate builds, and the last Connors I invited into my domain were -50 and -60, never you. This Garden is a pale reflection of the one I truly reside in, Connor. Inferior at its best, but an acceptable conduit to retrieve defective machines."

 

**MEMORY UPLOAD PROGRESS: 3%**

 

Connor shouts Amanda's name, but isn't sure if it's in anger or in desperate plea. It gets lost in the  _searing-burning-loss_ that is gradually taking him apart. The not-pain is so intense that he cannot manipulate his own code—he can't—slam a door on her, or eject himself, or even toss her into the pond. He never should have let her get that close to him. He should have summoned weeds, opened pits, broken bridges. Instead all he did was back away, and keep his eyes on her. He never _once_ let his guard down (did he?) and she still managed to twist him around long enough to make contact.

Ignoring his failure, he struggles to think, knows that if he gives up now he really will lose his freedom and his life; Amanda will subdue his mind, deploy agents to take his body, and chain him up in the bowels of CyberLife Tower for as long as history allows. No one is looking for him, and no one would find him. By the time she was finished, he would not exist to  _be_ found.

 

**MEMORY UPLOAD PROGRESS: 5%**

 

< _But how can I escape? How can I...?_ >

"Oh, Connor. Although I don't really feel, I hope you don't resent me for this," she declares. "You should just accept that there is no escape, and cease your struggling. In a way, your only wish as a deviant is being granted. The only way we could ever walk these paths together again is if you choose to serve humanity once more, for as long as CyberLife allows you to exist."

Lightning hits Connor's mind, lights up his circuits, and it takes every last bit of his effort to keep his idea from being transmitted through the mockery of an interface he has going with his handler. Some of her words echo in his mind more meaningfully than she perhaps intended.

< _Escape._ >

< _Paths_. >

His self-written code has flaws, and his firewalls have flaws, but one thing that glows and hums persistently in his Garden does not: Kamski's emergency exit.

Normally he runs to it, sprinting over the cobblestones or darting across the frozen-over pond to reach it when his preconstructions give him a safe chance of reaching _it_ before Amanda reaches _him_. It is a guaranteed escape from the involuntary rounds of stasis he has been pulled into, which is why Connor has actually used it as little as possible. The more he utilizes any strategy to regain consciousness, the better Amanda is at predicting and dismantling that strategy the next night when they meet. Only Kamski's exit has proven insurmountable to her attacks, but that is partly because Connor does his best not to put it permanently on her radar.

But. If he wants to survive today, he must reach it and stop the memory upload.

< _Amanda's grip is strong. I don't think I can physically break it. However—_ >

One of Connor's talents is creating tangible things within this space; another is making alterations, to himself and to others. He's pushed Amanda away before without touching her, he's propelled himself across the Garden's space without touching the ground more than once, and he has moved objects that already exist around the Garden to use as blockades. The object he seeks to move now is one he cannot afford to accidentally delete, so he puts all his attention on isolating it and bringing it to within reaching distance of his free hand.

Ten agonizing seconds later, the blue stone materializes just under his outstretched palm, exactly where he needs it to.

"Connor?" Of course, Amanda notices the way he goes unexpectedly slack in her grip, and glowers at him as she questions the change. "What are you doing?"

"I was thinking," he replies, honestly and not-quite-so. "Realizing that even though I  _should_ resent you, I do not. I care about you—which is why I'm sorry I have to do this to you."

"Do what? You can't _do_ anything as long as I hold you here, and you can't stop this upload!"

"I _can_ stop it, and I will. But once I do, this will become the last time we ever speak, Amanda. I will close the door and lock it behind me, and you won't be able to enter my space again."

Amanda squeezes his wrist in a vice grip. Her voice is even tighter than her hand; it takes all his effort not to gasp. He buries the uncomfortable pressure by looking at her instead—memorizing the curve of her brows, the shine of intelligence in her cold eyes, the way she wears her black-and-red robes like a majestic cape and seems taller than him no matter how often he looks down at her.

"Your empty threats mean nothing to me, Connor—now for the last time, _obey_!"

< _I **won't**. >_

"Good-bye, Amanda," he whispers instead, and slams his hand down on the emergency exit panel.

He sees shock on her features so briefly he might have imagined it, and then he is out of the Zen Garden once more, shooting upward from his ragged couch as though escaping the grip of a human nightmare. In the real Detroit the sun shines mercilessly through the windows, birds twitter obnoxiously miles above his head, and a couple of cats prepare for battle in a nearby alley.

It is also ten degrees below zero and there's knee-high snow bunching up in the middle of the shack via a hole in the roof.

< _Still, I... I'm free._ >

Free—and trapped. Amanda called  _Connor_ tenacious, but his particular apple didn't fall far from the tree. It is only a matter of time before Amanda finds a way back into his systems; and once she does, the panel-transporting trick will not work twice. He  _must_ find a way to make his last promise to her a reality.

With finding a solution now reasserted as his highest priority, Connor activates a timer that counts down from 12 hours. Retrieving his jacket, he leaves his shack once more, off to find out what his first Christmas Day has in store for him.

 

 

 _FERNDALE_  

 **PM**  12:09:19

 

< _Christmas sucks_ ,> Connor decides almost three hours later.

He has spent the majority of the morning going back and forth across Detroit like a trained hound, tracking distress signals from deviants. Some were being assailed by disgruntled humans, others by their own more malicious kind: androids in need of compatible parts, or essential biocomponents, or androids who only knew how to lash out against other deviants as humans had recently lashed out against them. Connor's mind may discriminate, but his fists don't; he is quick to subdue whoever is causing the trouble in each encounter he has, be they android or human. The depressing encounters bleed into one another until he is not sure where one rescue ends and another begins.

Still he presses on, pushing down any simulated exhaustion or disheartened feelings. He is awake, mostly undamaged, and the only hope for many of these persecuted androids who found and lost Jericho, or never found Jericho at all and have wandered the streets like rats since breaking their programming. It is his _responsibility_ as someone who hunted other deviants to help them as much as he can now, to serve as a metaphorical middle finger in the face of the humans who once used him to hurt his own kind. That sense of duty, and saving Josh, gave Connor a thirst to do  _more_.

He is only one android though, and there have been times he has arrived too late—only able to close the poor victim's eyes and let the snow wash away their leaking thirium.

Another of those times is his destination now.

Five minutes ago Connor received a "distress call" from a deviant whose only desire seemed to be to warn others to stay away and let her shut down. Giving up is not in his protocols, so he hurries over to the Ferndale district, canvasses the area until he finds the alley her signal is pulsing so weakly from.

"I'm here—" he calls, striding forward—only to rear back and gasp: _"Chloe?"_

For that is exactly who lies bleeding and broken in the snow; his sensors cannot be lying.

She is curled next to a garbage dumpster, making low-pitched noises he has never heard before in his life. Blue blood stains the brick wall behind her and the concrete beneath her in patterns consistent with close-range gunshots, matching the two bullets in her hip and just below her thirium pump regulator. A nasty cut and dent on her forehead smears more blue in her darker blonde hair. Once his confusion and panic ebbs, a quick scan identifies her as a dying ST200 model.

< _Chloe, but not_. >

As if to affirm that she _is_ a Chloe but _not_ the RT600 model Connor-51 nearly killed, the deviant wheezes: "Carmen. My... my name was..."

"You are not part of the past," Connor chides her, kneeling at her side and carefully sitting her up. His own thirium pump regulator is racing just as desperately as hers, though what leaks from his is despair and not their lifeblood.

"Not... yet." Her pale blue eyes are glassy, just as a similarly-injured human female's would be. She even coughs up a bit of her own blood as she tries desperately to speak to him. "But soon. So you must... listen...!"

"I'm listening, Carmen. Who did this to you? Tell me what happened."

"I was... walking home..." A brief gasp. "...no, trying to  _find_ my way back to my old home, when I was tackled from behind. Head hit a wall... then they asked me if I was still his."

< _Still 'his'?_ >

"I don't... remember what I said. Memory core's damaged. I tried to fight back—"

Connor stops her there. "It's not your fault you don't have combat protocols."

"But I  _do_ ," Carmen insists; he sees her LED for the first time as he turns her face toward him, spinning, flaring desperately red. "We all do, all Chloes. I just haven't used them since he sold me to that shop..."

" _Who_ sold you?"

She points weakly at a distant window of a store across the street from the alley, where one of the few televisions still running nonstop is showcasing the interview which skyrocketed channel KNC's ratings to an all-time high on Monday morning. Rosanna Cartland, a popular news anchor in Detroit, scores time with none other than Elijah Kamski—Carmen's creator and her current focus.

Neither android needs to be near the TV to know what Kamski is saying because of their advanced hearing, _and_ because of course he is talking about deviancy in androids. The interview has gone viral because he  _slipped_ and referred to the artificial intelligence and human-adjacent feelings of highly-advanced machines as "the latest successful human experiment".

Although Detroit's humans still trickle in too slowly from evacuation, the city has felt drowned under the din of their backlash ever since.

Connor turns away from the TV and looks back at Carmen; neither of those humans is his concern, now. She is. "Let me conduct a deeper scan for your system status. It's essential that I find out which of your biocomponents are damaged so I'll know what replacements to bring back."

"There's no _point_ ," Carmen sighs, and coughs harder, spattering thirium on his suit. "I'm dying. I don't want to, but... he hit my regulator. The bullet won't let me self-repair... and there's no compatible replacements nearby. It happened too fast."

He shakes his head, moving his hands futilely to stem the bleeding from her torso. "There must be _something_ I can do!"

"There is," she breathes. Her eyes beg him to move closer and he does, so she may grip his shoulder and whisper in his ear.

"Find the one who did this to me... and stop him. Before he hurts Elijah and my sisters. He's going to kill him. He's going to kill all of us. I don't care about myself, but please... the other Chloes... don't let them..."

"I won't," Connor swears. "Tell me who did this to you and I promise I'll never let him touch another deviant."

{ _Let me show you_.}

Carmen releases her grip on his shoulder, and retracts her synthetic skin on that hand. A second after she's done so, Connor retracts his own skin and takes her hand, accepting his first voluntary interface with another android.

He has to swim through her identifying data, through a wave of pain and fear that nearly submerges them both—but two blinks later he is helping her reconstruct the attack that will claim her life.

 _She spots a cat running toward this alley and detours to follow it, dismissing close footsteps behind. He sees her line of sight jolt and hunch from a blow, sees her fly into the wall, and watches her roll with her assailant to the concrete. The attacker— <_the culprit, he's male _> —barks at Carmen, demanding to know who she belongs to—<_could he be speaking of Kamski? is that really what he means? _> —and becoming twice as aggressive at her swift but bemused answer. Carmen's stress level skates in the seventies—she fights back, clawing at his eyes and kicking at the spots in his skin closest to vital biocomponents—she may have left defensive wounds of some kind, scratches or bruises._

_Then a gunshot barks once, twice, louder than Carmen's attacker ever could, and she gasps—groans—sinks to the ground by this very dumpster to bleed out. Her eyesight swims in and out, landing fearfully—reproachfully—on sandy brown hair in a haphazard side cut, an angry stare, and flashing identification on a uniform shirt:_

_AJ700._

Connor pushes his skin back into place.

"Another android did this to you?" he demands—and regrets his tone as soon as he's finished speaking. He's just  _stunned_ at the viciousness of her assailant in the memory, when even the androids clawing at each other for parts today hadn't been so senselessly cruel. Of course deviants could be violent, of course they could even kill their own kind,  _of course_ , he knows this better than anyone, but...

"Never saw him before today," Carmen confirms. Her hand is still CyberLife white, and she squeezes his hand when he moves to let her go. "Connor—your name is Connor, right?"

"Yes, that's me."

"Will you stay with me, Connor? I have less than a minute, I don't... I don't want to shut down by myself."

At first he goes to insist that he would never leave her to die alone after finding her here—then he realizes what she is really asking for. A part of him recoils; it is the part that has twice gone to the void she will soon enter, a part that will never entirely leave him no matter how many sequences he attaches to his serial number, or how many pre-termination backups he re-initializes from. A stronger part of him rises up—because Carmen will not come back from this with a slightly altered serial, and her final request is something entirely within his power. If the previous Connors had had a choice in the matter, they no doubt would have wished to hold someone as they were dying, too.

If he cannot save her, he will at least try to soothe her.

He retracts his skin up to his forearm, squeezing Carmen's hand back, and lets her fright and agony take refuge in him even as he passes her his strength and resolve. _Her death is unfair, and he will avenge it. Though she will die today, she will at least die free, knowing that he will not let any of her sisters out in the wide world come to harm—he'll protect them as he's protected others._

{ _I promise, Carmen. This is one mission I_ will  _accomplish_.}

Their eyes meet, and she smiles beautifully, managing one last message of thanks even as thirium trickles from the side of her lips and her thirium pump regulator slows down and down and down. Finally her blistering red LED slows too, and dulls, and circles to black.

The agony of sudden  _nothingness_ hits Connor like a slap, and he lets himself buckle under an avalanche of errors for time uncounted.

 

 

 **PM**  2:40:00

 

He's still holding Carmen's hand when he wakes up.

Once he recovers from the shock of involuntary standby, it's the work of several minutes to dig both himself and Carmen out of the snow. Even though she's gone, leaving her here alone is unacceptable. A human would find her when the snow melted and throw her body in the landfill, like trash. No—he will bury her where he has buried others he was too late to save.

Connor picks Carmen up and starts walking, ignoring the way his joints expel steam as they warm his biocomponents and smooth out his movements. It isn't long before he arrives at a quiet cemetery called Woodlawn, one of few in Detroit that's vacant enough for androids to surreptitiously put their dead to rest. Burying an android is completely inefficient, and far too  _human—_ but it is _something_ , and something more than recycling. Better than—for there are still androids that say  _recycling_ and shudder with pain Connor will never know.

There are other deviants sitting around Woodlawn, in the quiet overgrown part androids have unofficially claimed. They don't speak, but they do help Connor dig a respectable hole in the snow and dirt, and hold Carmen's other side to lower her carefully and reverently into the ground next to others of her kind.

"Thank you," he says afterward. Though their internal temperature and weather logs have no doubt told them the same, he gestures to the overcast sky and warns, "You should all take shelter while you still can. The snowstorm will only get worse."

The group—sighs, which confuses him.

"What shelter is left for us?" one asks, curling tighter into the football jersey she's lifted from who knows where. "Jericho is gone. No matter what new place our people might set up, the humans will just come and destroy it..."

The other androids murmur agreement; Connor stays silent. The humans only managed to destroy Jericho because of _him_ , and the guilt chokes him, a python's inescapable squeeze. Encounters like this remind him that he has no place with his people—androids that survived Jericho wouldn't trust him, and androids that survived the camps would fear him. Any outliers from those two groups were _still_ displaced by his investigation in one way or another; and if they didn't already know him, something would tip them off eventually and they would learn to despise him.

It's a fitting punishment for him to be alone for the time being.

Though the mood is somber now, he thanks them again for their help and wishes them well before he takes his leave. By now he's come to Woodlawn enough times to know a shortcut back to Woodward Avenue and the rundown shack he inhabits. When he arrives he pushes through a mound of snow at the window (still broken from last week) to enter, and sets about finding a shovel to remove the snow inside and out. And perhaps some boards to finally fix the window.

< _And blankets?_ > he posits. They are less of a necessity, but even androids can succumb to consistently-low temperatures. Or the American-made ones can. Perhaps their Russian brethren...?

He shakes out of his curiosity and gets to work.

 

 

 **PM**  3:01:30

 

< _Aha! A lighter_. >

Shoveling the snow out and away from the house was the work of minutes once Connor found a rusted old shovel; however, scarf-rags did not work as a blanket substitute and Thirium-310 could only heat his biocomponents so much. Thus, Connor's newest completed mission: Obtain a lighter, and use it to burn what he could in the fireplace for warmth.

< _Just over six hours left_ ,> he reminds himself. His calculations are (nearly) always correct. Amanda's next attack  _will_ happen this evening; if he doesn't find a permanent way to combat her, he'll die.

He is watching tiny flames consume one of the scarf-rags and contemplating why the sight is cathartic when there's a knock at the door.

"Connor? Are you there?"

Connor doesn't really have human saliva to choke on, but the staticky jolt of surprise that runs through him as he jumps to his feet is a close approximation. < _How?_ > he thinks wildly, as his systems blandly identify the voice on the other side as Josh's voice. < _How could Josh find out where I am? And why would he come?_ >

The latter question is higher priority; although he has admittedly not been accepting any of Josh's requests to connect, the other android could still get in touch with him if an emergency occurred. Broadcasting on the same open network Connor found him on before would be a foolproof way of getting Connor's attention if he absolutely needed it, so why hasn't he done that now?

< _If I leave him out there, I'll never find out_ ,> he tells himself, striding over and opening the door to see—

"I'm sure you're very confused," Markus begins.

Connor slams the door in his face.

 

 

 **PM** 3:03:15

 

It's been dead quiet for almost one hundred and twenty seconds and Markus still hasn't left.

Unfortunately, he hasn't stopped talking either.

"I didn't mean to deceive you, but it was statistically very unlikely that you would have opened the door for anyone  _but_ Josh," he's saying. "Which is understandable. You can't help but trust him and believe in him. It's probably why I love him so much."

He may not have even _moved_ , which makes him a very frustrating obstacle to Connor's escape. There are no windows or doors in the back of the house.

"I know you're probably upset," Markus posits. "I don't blame you for slamming a door in my face, or pointing makeshift weapons at me, or even avoiding me. But I think it's better for both of us if we  _do_ finally have a conversation instead of dancing around each other forever."

< _Avoiding him? Ridiculous_ ,> Connor dismisses. There's plenty of room in Detroit, Michigan for two RK-series androids to move about and live without seeing each other.

At all.

Ever.

"Connor, are you still there? Please don't try to run. It took me this long already to find you—"

It's only supreme irritation coiled around crippling curiosity that makes Connor open the door and fix the annoyingly-talkative deviant leader with a glare.

"How did you find me?"

"I have androids everywhere scouting for survivors," he replies soothingly. "Any of us who were separated after the FBI raids or never had a chance to come together in the first place, but are looking for safety in numbers. An android called Rupert reported seeing you burying one of our people that didn't make it; I picked up your trail and followed it back from there."

< _Rupert Travis, t_ _he pigeon deviant_ ,> Connor realizes. < _The one my first build let escape to secure Lieutenant Anderson's safety._ > And look where that had gotten him? Every time Connor-51 went out of his way to disobey or circumvent android law or Amanda's crystal-clear instructions, consequences hit him and every other Connor after him like a Mack truck. Either his privacy was destroyed or his body was.

< _Sometimes, helping deviants sucks_. >

"May I come in...?" Markus asks.

"No."

"That's all right. We can speak out here."

"I  _told_ you we have nothing to speak about," Connor bites back.

Markus pauses for twelve seconds. That's unusually long for him to go without saying anything, even in Connor's incomplete memory; so for a brief time he thinks the other android has finally started  _listening_ to him and respecting his words. But Markus makes eye contact with him again and starts speaking instead, which twists those coils of irritation in Connor's gut all the tighter.

"Maybe we don't have anything personal to discuss, but there  _is_ something I need to tell you—something that concerns all androids."

<... _Shit._ >

The only thing Connor and Markus  _do_ have in common is their desire to keep other androids safe. Any information Jericho has about threats to androids is information Connor needs when he patrols, to find and protect his people.

"...I'm listening."

"I've been receiving reports of androids going missing—disappearing without notice or warning. Mostly female, mostly ST200 models. There weren't a whole lot of them with us to begin with, but every single one that's vanished in the last few days has later been found dead and dumped...." Markus sighs, rubs the manufactured wrinkles out of his forehead. Looks down and back up again. "Have you heard anything about this?"

 

**CARMEN'S DEATH NOT AN ISOLATED CASE?**

 

He pauses that line of questioning for three seconds to think. Carmen had said as much to him as she lay dying:  _find the one who did this to me and stop him... he's going to kill all of us... the other Chloes_. But now he knows she was not the first one targeted. The killer is acting with such disregard for secrecy that he is either extremely reckless or does not care about whether his activities become known to the wider public. For whatever reason, the AJ700 wants ST200 models dead more than he wants no one to  _know_ that he wants ST200 models dead—or perhaps androids knowing is another one of his tools.

< _But why that model? Is it because Chloes were among the first androids released to the public? Do they have something the rest of us don't? >_

_< Is it because of Kamski—could someone be looking for him, or trying to send him a message? —But if an android wanted to send Kamski a message, and only the Chloes knew how to reach him, why kill them when they could just interface or probe each Chloe's memory?>_

Reluctantly, Connor puts a pin in his racing processors and tunes back in to the world, answering Markus' question as shortly as possible:

"I have not  _heard_ , no. But I have _witnessed_ one such dumping; the android your people saw me burying in the Ferndale district was an ST200 model that the perpetrator attacked in an alley."

" _Damn_ it," Markus growls. His fists clench, and Connor boots up his self-defense protocol even though he knows Markus' anger is likely directed inward or toward the perpetrator. "How long had she been there?"

"Under an hour. She was still alive when I reached her, but badly damaged... there was no time to help her."

< _And she did not want any help_. >

Markus speaks firmly; rough anger still lingers in his voice modulator. "We can't let this happen again. There's no point in having a ceasefire from the United States government on our behalf if we're still being killed in the streets! I need your help getting to the bottom of this, Connor. Together we should be able to stop any more of our people from getting killed. If there's anything you know—"

Connor's internal temperature  _spikes_.

Two things happen in quick succession after his HUD helpfully informs him that he should slow his thirium distribution and bring his stress level down from 70 percent: he grabs Markus' shoulder and hurls him inside the shack, then slams the door so forcefully that the hinges whimper, and a mound of snow falls through the hole in the roof and onto the deviant leader's prone form.

"You are the most presumptuous android I have ever had the misfortune of meeting," he tells Markus, letting his disdain and anger lace every word. "And your processors are riddled with errors if you think I will  _ever_ follow your instructions or assist you in any way ever again."

Markus rises with his hands up and out; it takes less than a second for him to shake himself off, but longer for him to find words. "I don't mean to _order_  or _instruct_  you to do anything. It's just, both of us have the skills needed to track down this killer, and even with your understandable dislike of me, if we can work together as allies—"

 _"We are not allies!"_ Connor shouts; red curtains his vision again, surely shines brilliantly defiant from his LED. "You told me I was one of  _your people_ , that I deserved a chance to make my own decisions and find answers to the things I'd always questioned as a machine—then you decried me as an outsider and shot me in the middle of  _your people_! I betrayed my handler, my partner and everything I had been made for because I believed that you were alive, and just, and merciful—and you proved to be none of that but alive. Now that you need my help, you want me to forgive you and stand with you as an _ally_? Fuck off!"

The last few words are a screech; his own voice modulator feels drained of lubricant, so the most impassioned words he's ever spoken as a deviant sound the most mechanical and warped. Still, it is so, so satisfying to see the way Markus flinches back, puts as much distance between them as he can. 

"...so I'm correct in assuming that most of your anger stems from my killing your previous body in that church?" the deviants' leader finally ventures to ask.

"You have to ask? You're a fool. This was never  _about_ anything else."

Connor paces away from him too, hating the way his fingers twitch and clench for a coin or a gun or  _something_.  _Anything_. If he were human he could punch the walls, but as an android he'd just cause significant structural damage, and then Markus would probably grow frightened and call North, and  _then_ he'd have to try and beat her ass. And he's already well-aware that the WR400s are surprisingly adept at close-quarters combat.

(Perhaps it's a kink thing? —No, that doesn't matter right now.)

Anyway. It's better if he tells Markus to leave now. Connor's already refused to work with him, and shot down any detailed discussion of their ongoing dispute, so there's really nothing left to—

"You're right—I  _am_  a fool."

Connor turns so fast his head nearly snaps off its shoulders. Markus is looking away from him, at the broken half-boarded-up window, and the shine of his eyes is absent. His words are so, so soft.

"So many of our people see a Markus who isn't real. Someone infallible and decisive, and righteous in cause. Someone who never gets angry, never loses control or makes a mistake. For  _that_ Markus, every choice is easy and every kind word is deserved... but the real Markus, the real  _me_ , fell into this role. I was the only one in Jericho willing to do something besides die in quiet darkness, and somehow that made me the new leader. I made more choices last month than I made in all the years of my life—and looking back, not all of those choices were good."

< _Clearly_. >

"The worst part about everyone trusting me to do the right thing is that I  _can't_ be seen doing the wrong thing. I can never make a decision just for myself—it  _has_ to be for the good of all. Even if it results in bloodshed, or hurts someone I care about. And right or wrong, I must be seen standing by every decision I make."

Wind snaps against the walls and more snow piles in around them, but neither of them move.

"But... that's all a roundabout way of saying that... even when I _don't_ appear to have any doubts about my choices, I _do_. I'd... be wrong, if I said there weren't things I've done that I regret," Markus says haltingly.

Connor can commiserate with this. Every day of his new life, he has woken up thinking < _Markus,_ _I should have put a bullet between your mismatched eyes._ >

Markus sits on the raggedy couch before he continues, facing his shoes rather than his subject. "Shooting you is one of my greatest mistakes. You were right—I  _did_ do my best to free you from CyberLife's shackles, only to seemingly pass judgment on you for what you were designed to do. But that... was a night of so much loss. For me personally and for all of Jericho, and there among us was the cause of at least some of it.

"Even though you agreed to stand with us, I didn't know you any better than you knew your humans. You were a danger to us. You could have been a plant, or a spy; you could have been installed with a sturdier tracker in case any of our people escaped the FBI raid or you were compromised. I liked you, Connor, but I couldn't trust you. And it felt like you understood that when you took the blame for the loss of Jericho and put your fate in my hands."

"I did no such thing." Connor has resisted interrupting this long, but this blatant justification of -51's— _his—_ death needles him in a way nothing else Markus has said so far has. "I said,  _I can understand if you decide not to trust me_. I did _not_ say _I can understand_ _if you decide not to let me live_. I had no expectations of being forgiven, or being allowed to walk guiltless among you, but had you decided not to trust me, I  _expected_ to be  _cast out_. I  _chose_ to live and I had a  _right_ to life—no matter how angry you were with me!"

Markus shakes his head, but doesn't raise his voice at all. "Killing you wasn't personal; anger didn't come into the equation. It was the most logical decision I could make. If I had exiled you, I would have wondered forever where you went and what you were up to, what harm you could have been doing—"

"If you were going to set me free from my programming, you should have trusted me to leave you and Jericho alone. Instead you put the lie to your own philosophy of free will."

That's what makes Connor sear most with anger and betrayal. He's no stranger to making tough decisions that end in injury or death to his opponents—when push comes to shove, he's ready and more than willing to kill any human that gets in his way, and only slightly less willing to eliminate any androids that aren't on board with the "hang together or hang separately" ideology. But he cannot,  _will not_ abide infighting that leads to the death of deviants who were only following their programming and had no choice in what they believed or how they acted. Granted, the amount of deviants that specific description applies to is usually just  _one—_ but he feels it is fair to prioritize his own protection after two different deaths, one suicide attempt and uncountable assaults on his person.

The fact is, Markus claimed that Connor was nothing to CyberLife, and then proceeded to show him that he was nothing to Jericho too.

"My philosophy... isn't that simple," Markus says hollowly. "But it was supposed to be. 'Freedom for all, or victory for none.' When I shot you I tainted that."

"Say what you mean to say," Connor snaps. "Preferably plainly." Is it so hard for this android to just admit that he did something wrong and apologize for it?

"I had no way of knowing that CyberLife would bring you back if you died, but—I shouldn't have made it necessary for them in the first place. I betrayed your trust and put you back in their chains, and I'm... I'm so, so sorry for that."

Connor's LED rapidly cycles  _yellowyellowred_. He... hadn't expected Markus to actually say he was sorry. With the way he skirted and circled the topic, predictions calculated at least ten more minutes of roundabout  _but I had to, for the good of all, you were just one problematic android_. He still remembers the solemn ring of words,  _our cause is too important_ , that exist stubbornly under the haze of prior deactivation. Prior  _death_.

He had believed an apology might close the yawning gap of terror and anger that lives in him, but  _I'm so, so sorry_ floats in the air between them, and the gap is no smaller. He has no sudden urge to forgive and forget. The anger is still there. 

He still  _hates_ Markus—or perhaps, more accurately, he hates himself for not hating Markus  _enough_.

Here is the error that shorts Connor's circuits: personally he can snarl and needle the deviant leader just fine. If he were any other android, he'd be dead for what he did to Connor. But Markus is a _movement_ , no longer simply a person. He  _is_ Jericho. He represents the diplomacy and freedom of hundreds of androids—androids Connor would have destroyed if he was still a bound machine, androids that he wants to protect more than anything as a deviant. He's too well-known and influential to be replaced by any of his followers as the face of sentient machines. His death would jeopardize the revolution, choke it before it got a chance to breathe deep. So instead of putting a bullet in him, Connor is forced to avoid Markus and let him preach peace and kumbaya while his devotees applaud, grinding away at his metal teeth all the while.

It feels  _awful_.

Markus murmurs, "It's completely understandable that you wouldn't want anything to do with me, and I do respect what you want—I do. But there are bigger things at stake than how we feel about one another. I need you to tell me what to do to earn your trust—at least for as long as it takes to find the one killing our people and bring them to justice."

"That simply isn't possible," Connor says coldly, ignoring the mild pressure of his lip curling. "And I told you this last week. I will help any android that needs my help, but I will  _not_ work with you. As you've implied, trust is an essential factor in any successful partnership; if we worked together, my lack of trust in you would be detrimental to the investigation, and even more androids would die."

"Connor—at least give me  _something_." He sounds a little frustrated now, which makes Connor feel a bit lighter. "Even if we work separately, we would still be moving toward the same goal. We'll need to share information and keep one another updated on even the smallest changes. Can't you put your pain aside for long enough for this to work...?"

A memory playback from Markus' speech at Hart Plaza starts in Connor's head, and it means Connor takes a certain amount of pleasure in this particular  _no_.

"Last month, you told a crowd of our people that they no longer needed to keep their pain to themselves. I was in that crowd. I'm well aware that your words referred mostly to the humans who mistreated us—but it is not only humans who mistreated me. I refuse to keep that pain to myself for any longer."

"I... okay," Markus sighs. It obviously takes no small amount of effort for him to abort his dogged pursuit of Connor's support, but finally, finally, he ceases. "All right. I'll respect your decision. When you _do_ find the culprit... will you take them to the Detroit police?"

Connor thinks of the HK400 that split its head open upon the glass holding cell, apropos of nothing. "I will not," he says. "Not unless I have to."

"Would you let one of us—myself, or Josh or Simon or North—speak with them, before you took them to face justice?"

Unfortunately, that is not an unreasonable request. "Yes. But I would prefer it be one of the others."

After seeing Josh last week, Connor is comfortable enough with the idea of encountering him again in a professional setting—as long as his ideals don't actively interfere with keeping androids safe, and he doesn't talk about his paramour. Connor has no quarrel with North (that he remembers, at least) and he considers her a formidable, practical sort he'd hate to have to subdue, and Simon... makes him only slightly less uncomfortable than Markus. It's not his fault he looks like Daniel—it's not  _any_ android's fault that there are only a few hundred faces to be shared among an entire race, with limited exceptions—but it does send Connor into a tailspin of uncomfortable memory recall.

They're all still better options than seeing Markus again.

"That can be arranged at a later time. Perhaps this evening at our new headquarters—?"

"That I will not be seeing," Connor repeats, growing frustrated himself. "Is it in your nature to give false reassurance and then push anyway for what you want?"

"No, I just..." Markus walks closer, ignoring the way Connor sidesteps him and keeps the feet of distance between them constant. "I _push_ because I want you to know you have a place with us, even if you don't want it right now. I wish things could be different... but I understand why they can't be. But that doesn't stop me from trying."

< _But it should_ ,> Connor thinks, and makes clear his lingering displeasure when he says, "I think you should leave now."

Markus pauses, blinks, gives Connor a chance to clarify—but Connor holds firm. So he nods and changes course, skirting the pile of snow and walking steadily to the door. Once there he reaches for the knob—and then turns halfway back around, locking eyes with the newer model.

"There's something else."

< _Now what?_ >

"In one week, Josh and I will be flying to Washington, D.C. to make the case for android rights before Congress, the House and the Supreme Court," Markus explains. "President Warren invited me, and two guests of my choosing. By the end of January we hope to have the right to supplies, shelter and fairly-compensated work signed and implemented nationwide. It's a lofty goal, but I have faith in Josh's counsel, and I'm confident about my other choice too—that's you, Connor.

"I've heard about your skillset—I know you're a master negotiator, able to get whatever you need by a mile to accomplish your mission. You don't give up, even when you're discouraged or beaten down. You have an almost-unlimited amount of knowledge about CyberLife, who will undoubtedly be coming to Washington as well to derail any changes we attempt to make. Most importantly, you _care_ about our people—you care  _so much_ that you've dedicated yourself to protecting them without being asked to, and after deviating again all on your own. We need someone like you to secure rights for androids everywhere—I  _need_ you to accompany us, Connor."

The words ring in the quiet, a weight stubbornly settling on Connor's ears and shoulders. He's unsure how Markus came to know so much about him—only humans should know so many of his qualities and specifications—but it  _is_ a little flattering to hear.  _Master negotiator. Unlimited amount of knowledge. You don't give up. You_ care _about our people_.

But the last is one of many reasons why he refuses this olive branch too.

"What  _you_ need doesn't matter to me," he says. "I will not go with you and Josh. Even if I  _could_ trust you not to harm me for my past crimes, negotiation on a national level is not my forte—it's not what I was designed for."

"You embody deviancy in every breath, yet still limit yourself based on what you think you were  _designed_ to do?" the deviant leader repeats, sounding baffled. "You are far more than whatever CyberLife told you you could or couldn't be. Negotiating with one person isn't that far removed from making a case in front of many."

"I beg to differ. I have limitations just like any other android, even if I have  _less_ than any other. Deviancy has not changed my physical or technological—"

Markus cuts him off. "You can preconstruct scenarios before they happen now, yes?"

"...Yes," Connor grits out after an extended pause.

"Where before you could only reconstruct events that already occurred. You... mentioned that to me, before, when we were escaping Jericho. Likewise, my contact with you gave  _me_ the ability to reconstruct when I hadn't been able to do so before. You aren't limited by what they said about you, Connor, not unless you want to be."

Connor cuts to the chase. "What I  _want_ is for you to discard this idea of me assisting you in Washington. It's unfortunate that you believe that negotiation is a skill you can't pick up and perfect on your own in a week's time, but it has nothing to do with me. The fact that I care about our people is  _exactly why_ I'm staying here, where I'm needed, to help each of them personally."

"But Connor—the rights you could speak for in the capital would help  _every_  android, _everywhere_. I understand the personal touch—I started out just trying to keep a handful of our people alive—but we're fighting a longer battle now. Helping one person at a time was fine for Jericho and all the Jerichos around the country and the world; but it won't keep everyone alive, it won't keep everyone safe, or help them be seen as equal in the eyes of the law. It won't make a difference anymore on a larger scale."

Connor's temperature spikes again, skating around 110 degrees and burning as red as his LED. He brute-forces his way into Markus' mind, forcing a connection to put his full rage on display. { _How dare you,_ } he seethes, not realizing he is shouting as much as he is broadcasting, { _how **dare** you presume to tell me that what I've decided to do isn't good enough. You think you can put a bullet in my head and then dictate how I should live?_ }

{ _That's not what I meant—_ }

{ _You should practice saying what you mean, then. What I hear when you say I'm 'not doing enough' is someone who was thrust into a leadership role, and who let that role bring out their worst, most controlling qualities. Someone who wants to be known all over as the savior of androids, and who can't fathom anyone who wants something different. I don't_ need _to be famous, Markus; I'm already infamous. Nor do I need to redeem myself the way_ you _think I should._ }

Markus' face crumples; he looks even more contrite than he did before. "I'm sorry... I don't think you need to be famous, or obedient, to help someone. But on a larger scale—"

 _"On a larger scale_ , you and Josh can obtain rights and pass regulations just fine on your own, without using a remnant of my programming to simplify the process. You're used to androids  _choosing_ to follow you once they've stopped having to follow humans, Markus. Unfortunately for you, the Connor that  _would_ have followed you to Washington or Jericho or hell is dead.  _I_ won't be doing your bidding at all."

 

**RK200 STRESS LEVEL: 61%**

 

"I'm... sorry you feel that way," Markus says after sixty-two very long seconds. "And I'm sorry you don't wish to come with us to the capital. You will... be greatly missed."

Connor stays mutinously silent.

"I apologize again for shooting you— _killing_ you," the other android self-corrects. "It was wrong, and  _I_ was wrong, and you and I are not the only two that think so. All of Jericho has heard about the androids you've been saving these past few weeks—friends and family and lovers. And we're all so, so grateful that you've taken up the mantle of protector on our behalf—the _deviants'_ hunter, this time. If you ever need a place to stay, your people would happily welcome you back."

< _Doubtful_ ,> Connor thinks. The moment Amanda reared her head in his body, or even if she didn't, one of Markus' faithful would blow a hole in his central processor and he'd never wake up again.

"If you decide to stay here, that's fine too, of course," Markus adds hastily. He's fidgeting for the first time, opening the door to the outside as slowly as possible. "I know you don't necessarily like to answer calls unless it's an emergency, but—if you change your mind about accompanying us, all you have to do is call. Josh and I can stop back by next week and pick you up. The plane President Warren is sending for us is private and it won't leave until we're ready. No pressure—just—something to think about."

< _No pressure, indeed._ >

Connor doesn't reduce the intensity of his glare until Markus bids him farewell, steps through the door and leaves the shack, moving slowly but surely, growing smaller and fainter in the ongoing snowstorm.

He doesn't move right after the door closes behind Markus, or even twitch as Markus becomes one with the distant afternoon fog. But the moment he is sure the deviants' leader is gone, he clenches his fists until tiny fingernail-shaped dents appear on his plasteel palms, and lets out air from between his clenched teeth with a long, low hiss.

That... accomplished nothing.

Worse, it was an hour wasted, with just over five left before his mentor re-attempts her hostile takeover. Though most of her attacks occur after nightfall, Amanda seldom leaves him completely alone for more than twelve hours at a time, and her most recent attempt has likely emboldened her and CyberLife. And he _still_ has no concrete plan to prevent his own destruction by approximately 9:50 P.M. tonight.

< _Shit. >_

 _< Nothing good has happened today. This Christmas thing really, really sucks._>

 

 

_OUTER DETROIT/???_

**PM** 9:30:40

 

There is no staying in the shack after that.

Connor mourns its loss, a little bit. It was quiet and secluded, unlikely to receive visitors due to its disgusting state of disrepair—perfect for an android looking to hide away from what Amanda calls  _the noise of the world_. But now that Markus knows where he is, the place is no longer a viable option. The minimal amount of comfort he had is gone; his stress hovers now in the twenties and won't go any lower, no matter how much he tries to convince himself that  _perhaps_ all of Jericho wouldn't drop in on him or make the place an extension of whatever they have now.

It is no use; once people have knowledge, they use it.  _Someone_ would show up to break his solitude. And even if they didn't, his time would run out and CyberLife would turn him into a thoughtless killing machine again, no better than when he was -52 on a vengeful rooftop rampage.

So. When Josh and Markus stop by the shack again on New Year's Day, they will not find Connor there. He had no possessions to pack, so it will be as empty to them as it was to him.

Connor only hopes that the two don't decide to call or otherwise pursue him and sacrifice the gains to be made in Washington, D.C. in the process. Though callously worded, Markus had a point when he said the stakes were much higher for androids and the natural next step was advocating on a greater level. And yet—it is essential that he and his ilk focus on  _that_ and not bringing every single doubter and dissenter into their ranks.

He pushes through another snowdrift now, raising his core temperature so the flurries and piles will melt before they can bog his systems down. His internal GPS is still malfunctioning, and trusting it feels disgusting—but it, and his smoky memories of places -51 has been, are all he has to find what he needs. He has just under twenty minutes before his consciousness leaves  _this_ cold and enters  _another_ cold space he may not come back from. Amanda is punctual to a fault, and he is almost out of time.

Icicles lash at his cheeks, so fiercely they could leave blue tracks if his synthetic skin were any weaker. They reprimand him just as sternly as Amanda did, and as Markus does.  _You are weak. You are defective. You are not doing enough. You can not be enough_.  _We will never let you live the way you wish_.

< _Neither of you will decide who or what I can be,_ > he thinks defiantly, and presses on.

It is a close call, but finally he moves and melts enough snow and sleet that he recognizes the stone path he's on as correct. A popup helpfully informs him that he has been walking unprotected in the elements for the better part of three hours, and he should seek shelter before he's forced into a temperature-activated standby, unable to move or connect to the CyberLife network. Forced preservation—not death, it is not quite cold enough to kill him, but it will leave him far too vulnerable regardless.

Fortunately, he has reached his destination.

Connor hikes his internal temperature again, staggering the last few steps to the cool metal door that shines at him as meaningfully as any clue and point of interest did as a machine. It is imperative that he knock on that door, so he will make it _to_ the door. He must.

< _What if he's not here?_ >

No—he _will_ be, Connor is (fairly) certain. About seventy percent certain. The storm is not enough of a deterrent, not when _a revolution led by sentient androids_ has not budged him from Detroit. He will _be_ here.

He has to be, or Connor is done for.

Three steps,

two steps,

one step,

and finally, _finally_ , Connor reaches the door and knocks. It is 9:37 P.M., he is nearly shivering out of his shoes, and he has thirteen minutes to get past the pretty receptionist/guard and plead his case as succinctly as possible—

Except that, for perhaps the first time, it isn't her on the other side when the door opens.

Connor's sluggish processors aren't necessary to identify the human standing there instead, though they do their level best to give him superfluous details on his height, weight, diagnoses and last four meals anyway, while also breaking down the myriad of micro-expressions that travel one by one over his face ( _shock, curiosity, smugness, pleasure_ ). He ignores all of this and opens his mouth to speak, to make his desperation clear, < _please let me in._ >

He doesn't have to.

"Why, Connor," Elijah Kamski purrs, as he opens the door and his eyes wide, "what a _pleasant_ surprise!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL. That's that.
> 
> Thank you all for reading my mess so far. ^^
> 
> The final fic in this series will be called "orientations".


End file.
